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by Lynda Lester
A large number of colleagues and friends turned out for Bernie O'Lear's retirement party, held in NCAR's Mesa Lab cafeteria on 10 January 2003. Farewell speeches recognized Bernie as a leader, consummate professional, avid traveler, wine afficionado, athlete and outdoorsman, dragon killer, and family guy. His love of France was reflected in the party's French cafe ambience.
     
    
    
      
     
Bernie started work at NCAR as an applications programmer, moved on to became a systems programmer, and was a founding member of the IEEE Computer Society Mass Storage System Technical Committee. He wrote the Request for Proposal (RFP) for the first mass storage device at NCAR, which resulted in the procurement of the Ampex TeraBit Memory (TBM) system in 1977.
Author of numerous papers and presentations, he is also a considered the "father of NCAR's Mass Storage System," which was developed in SCD by Bernie's Mass Storage Systems Group, became operational in 1986, and was technologically far ahead of systems at most of NCAR's peer organizations. By the early 1990s, SCD review panels were calling the MSS "the crown jewel" of NCAR.
Bernie became manager of SCD's High-Performance Systems Section in 1986 and associate director of SCD in 1994.
SCD bids him a respectful and fond au revoir, wishing him bonne chance in his future endeavors.
For more information on Bernie's career and retirement, see "Bon voyage, Bernie!" and "Changing of the guard: Tom Bettge to become new SCD associate director."
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